Friday, 30 October 2015

I used to write a blog called 'Not Quite Scilly'. It was a birding blog, with occasional digressions elsewhere. It related the activities and opinions of a middle-aged bloke based in East Devon, and mostly those of a birdy nature. I enjoyed writing it, and by all accounts many enjoyed reading it. Then, for a variety of reasons, I killed it. If this seems paradoxical...well...I know.

So here is my new blog. It is called 'Not Quite Scilly'. I like this name. It abbreviates nicely to NQS, which saves breath and space on a page. The future of NQS is presently unclear to me. When a blog appears for its THIRD incarnation I would be among the first to raise a sceptical eyebrow and express doubts as to its life expectancy. However, for now at least, it is back...

Of course, I did wonder how exactly to begin a new beginning. Eventually I came up with this:

A photo of my bins...

As you see, Zeiss 10x40 BGA (and possibly 'T') for which I paid something like 280 quid. An online Inflation Calculator makes this £733.71 in today's money, which maybe tells us that current top-notch optics are vastly over-priced? Mind you, to be fair, I am not tasked with keeping Carl Zeiss Aktiengesellschaft in the black.

I bought these bins just prior to a fairly epic Scilly trip in 1987. Leaping from the chopper that October I looked the biz with my spanking new optics. However, striding off the Scillonian in 2015 I looked very far from the biz, with my ancient nockies dangling from their customised red nylon dog lead.

Twenty eight years! My Zeiss are showing signs of their age, but still work fine. In a side-by-side comparison with my mate @birdingprof's shiny new Leicas they fared surprisingly well, and in use I am just as able to quickly spot and mis-ID stuff as birders with two-grand Swaros.

I briefly toyed with the idea of drawing thoughtful parallels between my dated bins and dated self, but this would be way, way too pretentious even for me. So instead I simply apologised to my battered Zeiss for so frequently allowing them to get dusty...